I bought the "fireman's" set from ZTC (and yes actually having to fork out cash for an item- rather than winning it - does influence your opinion ;-) - which is basically the cheapest complete set (controller, booster and transformer) that you need to get started with DCC.
However with the benefit of hindsight if I was wanting to dip my toes in the water, I'd go to German eBay
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and buy a Roco digital start set, which typically sell "buy it now" (ie it's fixed price) for ?59 - ?79, which is around £45-£65, and also gives you everything you need in a much simpler packaging and is much, much cheaper than the ZTC set (although to be fair the ZTC set gives you more- but if you're wanting to test the water or just run locos then you probably dont need all the bells and whistles).
The other advantage of the Roco start set (and it's half the reason I've just ordered their digital sound start set- sound loco and *sound* coaches!) is that it's basically Lenz re-badged, and compatible with the various Lenz add-ons (the computer interface, something ZTC don't do, is something I'm particularly interested in).
Edward
PS
If anyone else is "Continental" and hasn't discovered this yet: buy mail-order from a German retailer. I was shocked to discover that UK retailers do a straight ?1 = £1 when pricing continental models- and sometimes worse! As I mentioned above I was looking to buy the Roco digital sound start set: UK price £399-£423. I found a German retailer with a web presence (Google for Modellbahnecke) selling the exact same set for ?399 !!! And that seemed to be repeated for the other models I looked at. That's about a third off the UK price.
> "Phil Stubbington" wrote Andy
>> Cost and value aren't the same thing - you can have something very low
>> cost but of high value to you, something very expensive which has no
>> value to you at all, and every combination in between. A Mercedes SLK
>> is high cost, but low value if you can't drive, work in London and
>> can't park anywhere, etc.
>
> Phil.
> Yes I see what you mean! I think I'm probably jumping to the defence of
> ZTC as I'm a happy user of the system (Although as I have said before, I was
> lucky enough to WIN it not buy it.!)
>
> I must admit, I do question the £30 plus for the unit for controlling only 4
> points though... Makes stud and probe sound very cheap!, but I feel the main
> cost of the unit is the hard metal shell it comes in and the fact it's still
> a cottage industry rather than a mass produced item (like I guess the Lenz
> et al units are on the continent)
>
> ZTC is a good unit, but I will say to anyone thinking of DCC - Try it, try
> another maker - see which you can afford and which one suits best! Lenz are
> just as good, I know, I use their chips!
>
> Andy